Tarpon Springs Vice Mayor Panagiotis Koulias has dropped his plan to resign and run for mayor. He reversed course about two minutes before the Oct. 2 deadline and will serve out his term on the City Commission.
Koulias told the Beacons on Oct. 1 that he would resign the next day so he could run in the March 2028 mayoral election. The city charter requires a sitting commissioner to sit out one year before running for mayor.
Earlier on Oct. 2, he teased a “big announcement” on his Facebook page. But shortly before the 5 p.m. deadline that afternoon, he arrived at the city clerk’s office and said, “I’m not resigning.”
Koulias explained the decision in a Facebook post Oct. 6.
“After thorough consideration, I have decided to fulfill my Oath to the City, and finish my term,” he wrote. “To run for Mayor, I would have had to resign on October 2 at 5pm and give up 18 months. My word to Tarpon Springs means more than being Mayor again at this time. The Citizens reached out to me in overwhelming support to stay on the Board and monitor this rogue Government.”
With the post, he included a clip from “The Wolf of Wall Street” in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s character tells a room of cheering stockbrokers, “I’m not leaving. The show goes on …”
A day before his reversal, Koulias had laid out his reasons for running. He told the Beacons that “this board has taken a rogue turn in spending finances without voter approval, mismanaging and under-developing Charter officials like the prior city manager.”
In a resignation statement he sent the Beacons, he wrote: “It will take someone like myself with the experience, knowledge and understanding of our city budget, staff, and most importantly the residents to move this city forward, but be fiscally responsible in the process. The hometown residents know my love of Tarpon Springs, and how we must fight off the transient residents, who are power hungry to control our historic city, who have no knowledge of it.”
Koulias was first elected to the commission in 2022 and was reelected without opposition in 2025. During his first term, he served as vice mayor and became mayor Oct. 1, 2024, after Mayor Costa Vatikiotis resigned.